'Bobbie', the lavender bear from Bridestowe Lavender Estate, has become a popular 'must have' item in South East Asia, after being spotted on the social media sites of well known Chinese media personalities.

After visiting the farm at Nabowla in North East Tasmania, they were photographed with their newly acquired 'lavender bears'.

This has caused a rush on the farms website, where people could, until recently, order various lavender products, including 'Bobbie'.

It seems Bobbie has disappeared for now as the company work through the orders they already have.

The rush on stock has been somewhat of a surprise, although the company has been actively pushing into the South East Asian market for a number of years.

Managing Director for Bridestowe, Robert Ravens, has witnessed the growth of demand especially in the last six months.

"We've been working for about four years to place Bridestowe products in the new Asian market; we've always been very famous in Japan and to some extent in Hong Kong, but we've been working in a focussed way with China."

There has been a big surge in inbound tourism from China as well, and they've bought the bear and they've taken them back to China."

"Then about two months ago some very famous media personalities in China were seen with the bears, and once that went into their Facebook and communication channels, the whole thing has become electrified."

"We actually had to take the bear down from our website, and people have been hacking into the backend of our website to place orders."

Every story you can imagine has happened to us; people are using their friends, close contacts, pressure is brought to bear is all sorts of channels just to acquire one, or one thousand, of these bears, it's become a mania, just like the black tulip."

"There are bidding wars in China for the product, it's beyond comprehension."

The company produces the bears on the farm with a small team of workers, and at this time the business model caps what the company can produce."

Apart from using the Tasmanian wheat and lavender in the bears, there are logistics and transport costs for getting the authentic product to the market.

The company is increasing production as much as it can, but is cautious that the demand will be a fad that will reduce at some time.

The company's other lavender products have also seen an increase in demand across the same time period.

The current bears have 'Made in Australia' on the label, however to reduce the chance of imitations, the new model bears will have 'Made in Tasmania'.